


mine be thy love

by serephemeral



Category: Stardust (2007)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 21:19:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serephemeral/pseuds/serephemeral
Summary: England calls to him, singing him a heart-song he can’t ignore, a song of a sword drawn from a stone, a golden cup, a thorn tree flowering in winter. It’s almost as if he can reach out and --





	mine be thy love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skierunner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skierunner/gifts).



He is all of twelve the first time he hears the name. _England_.

He’s with his father, Captain Ghostmaker, on the _Caspartine_ . They are entertaining guests, and the discussion turns from the price of lightning to the prevalence of pickpockets at the market near the Wall. And then it happens. Someone says “I heard there was an attempt, not long back. Someone trying to come in from the other side. From _England._ ”

He doesn’t know why, but it stirs something in his heart, a longing he can’t name or explain. It tugs at the edges of his imagination, and snatches of knowing come to him as if in a vision -- a sword drawn from a stone, a golden cup, a thorn tree flowering in winter. It’s almost as if he can reach out and -- 

His father’s voice cuts in, bringing him back to reality. “England? Ha! England is nothing but a myth, friend, a myth for children and old wives and those who rely on fluff and nonsense to build a reputation as tellers of tall tales and spinners of fancy. Better to put your mind at ease! Nobody crosses the Wall. Not from our way nor from the other side.”  
  
His spirits sink, though he can’t explain why, can’t explain why the thought of this place -- this _England_ \-- fills his heart with excitement and makes his pulse race. Why does he yearn to know more about this England, this place on the other side of the Wall? And why does the notion of it being a myth shatter his heart a little? His father has always told him that everything he needs is right here in front of him, right here in Stormhold. So he tries to turn his attention back to dinner, back to the gossip and the more serious chatter of his father’s friends, because all of this -- the _Caspartine_ , the family business -- will be his one day, and he’ll need to remember how his father, the fearsome Captain Ghostmaker, maintained his reputation.  
  
But that night in his small berth, he dares to let the word take shape in his mouth, to whisper it into the softness of the night as one would whisper a prayer.  
  
“ _England_.”  
  
He rises, drawing his nightclothes tight about him as he makes his way across the cool cabin to the window. The stars are out, twinkling, and one in particular catches his eye. It seems to shine especially bright, almost as if it were shining just for him.  
  
He knows about wishes, of course. They’re flighty and fickle things at the best of times, and you can never tell exactly what will happen when you wish upon a _star_. All the same, he reasons, it can’t hurt to try. Not when a thing calls to you like this, sings in your bones the way England thrums and hums in his.

“Please,” he whispers. “ _Please_ let England be real. And...and if it’s not too much...let me go there? Or at least meet someone who has been there. Hearing about it from a real England-person would be enough.”

***

He’s made his way back to bed and is fast asleep under the covers, dreaming of men with bows in a greenwood and a Prince whose brother, the good King, is locked away in a tower. He doesn’t see the star shine out, briefly, before fading back into the deep blue of the night sky.

***

The longing only grows. He tries his best to quench it, spends evening after evening chasing down storms, casting the nets wide for lightning. His father approves, noting with pride that his son is forging a fine reputation for himself. “You’ll make a fine, fearsome Captain one day, my boy.” And when Ghostmaker says it, he can almost believe it. Almost.    
  
He learns the ways of barter and trade and discovers the best ways to elude the company of witches; he earns renown with his blade, so much so that when he walks through the Market people stand up a little straighter, look a little more lively when they see him pass. (He kisses a handsome man, then another; but this, for now, he keeps to himself.)  
  
And if, on starlit nights after Markets, he walks through the wood to the Wall, gazing through the gap into the green field on the other side, what of it?

Everyone dreams of something, after all.

*** 

He’s twenty and downing a pint in _The Slaughtered Prince_ when he hears it: a gruff, low sort of voice that somehow breaks through the din. “...and I’ve got somethin’ real special this time, I’m tellin’ you: a _book_ from beyond the Wall! From England, no less.”  
  
His heart goes to his throat as time seems to hang suspended, an everlasting, golden moment of terrible hope and possibility. And then he spins around, scanning the room for the source of the voice. A trader, hunched and grizzled with age; a trader who claims to have contacts “on the other side, once a century or so.” He just nods, taking it all in, before venturing a hopeful “You said...something about a book?” He hears the tremor in his own voice, feels himself begin to shake as the man pulls a weathered book from his bag.

“Aye, lad. _The Complete Works of William Shakespeare_. One o’ their best, or so I’m told. They call ‘im a wordsmith, whatever that means. I s’pose on the other side they may need smithies to make words? I’m not familiar with their sort o’ magic.”

(It costs him dearly: thirty thousand bolts of grade-A, smuggled out of their private reserve. The trader is pleased, though, and disappears almost immediately; and although he often looks out for that face in the years after and listens closely for that voice, he never runs across the man again.) 

***

He can feel the magic before he touches the book: it seems to crackle up from the cover to meet his hands, beckoning him to open it, to get lost in its pages. It’s an -- _ordinary_ sort of magic, somehow; as ordinary as eating a piece of toast with honey or smelling the first hint of Spring on a breeze in Winter. But it calls to him, singing him a heart-song he can’t ignore, a song of swords resting in lakes and mornings grey with mist upon heather and --

He opens the book.

*** 

  
_A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted_

_Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;_

_A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted_

_With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;_

_An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,_

_Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;_

_A man in hue, all “hues” in his controlling,_

_Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth._

_And for a woman wert thou first created;_

_Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,_

_And by addition me of thee defeated,_

_By adding one thing to my purpose nothing._

_But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,_

_Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure._

 

_Sonnet XX, William Shakespeare_

 

(Everyone dreams of something, after all.)

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Yuletide Recipient, 
> 
> I do hope you enjoy this little fic! I had a lot of fun thinking about how Captain Shakespeare might have fallen in love with England as a little boy, and how that story might weave with elements of our beloved Stardust film. I tried to work in lots of little references to what might be considered English mythology, and I hope I got it mostly right (and that folks have fun sussing these out).


End file.
